


The Cure for Anything

by Superstition_hockey



Series: Depth on the Bench [8]
Category: Original Work, Superstition Hockey, Surf fandom
Genre: Blowjobs, Drinking, F/M, Luc Chantal's pathological competitiveness, Overuse of the word dude, Recreational Drug Use, Sexism in sports, Surfing related dangers, That time Luc burned Lemieux's jersey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 15:24:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11016195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Superstition_hockey/pseuds/Superstition_hockey
Summary: “Chants,” he says, holding his hand out to shake. Straightforward. Firm handshake. Eye contact. No cheesy line. He has the most stupidly long eyelashes she’s ever seen on anyone and it’s grossly unfair.





	The Cure for Anything

**Author's Note:**

> So...um. Continue to ignore everything about Bay area geography, okay? Just don’t think too hard about where the Hertls' house is in relation to the surf house or … any of those cities. 
> 
> Also, I’m going to have to plead #AU and artistic license for some of the technicalities of women’s matches in major competition circuits. While I tried to capture the general level of frustration among women surfers, and big wave surfers in particular, some of the details about WSL schedules and whether they already have women’s matches or not, is not perfect. 
> 
> Titans of Mavericks is an Invitation only big wave surfing competition held at Mavericks Beach outside Half Moon Bay in California.  
> 2016 was the first year that a women's heat was added to the Titans of Mavericks lineup. In the documentary It Ain't Pretty, many men who surf Mavericks mention that while they think the women big wave surfers are "good" they're not at an "elite level" and don't deserve a space in the lineup with the men's competition saying "it's just about the skill level not being there." 
> 
> This started off as 5+1 and sort of retains that format. 
> 
> Many thanks to dangercupcake for fixing all my commas.

 1.

 

There’s some white boy staring at her from down the bar at Julio’s next to the beach.

She’s had a busy day – strength training all morning with Disko, then work at the board shop, and then catching some little waves at the beach just a few blocks away. Nothing big, but they’d been structured enough that she could really carve into them. Now, she’s hungry, she’s eating a burrito, and she really wasn’t anticipating pulling anyone.

Anyway, he looks like an asshole: too pretty, too cut to not be self-absorbed, and wearing a watch that she’s pretty sure is worth more than her life. An asshole. He’s half watching the Baja 1000 where it’s playing on the TV, but mostly he’s watching her.  But he’s not leering. Not really. It’s a look that’s half frank assessment, cocky and sure and appreciative, and half… wistful.  She lets her eyes linger back, because, hey, he looks like an asshole but he’s also _very pretty_. He notices, scoots over three seats, dragging his plate of tacos with him.  

“Chants,” he says, holding his hand out to shake. Straightforward. Firm handshake. Eye contact. No cheesy line. He has the most stupidly long eyelashes she’s ever seen on anyone and it’s grossly unfair.

She’s about to answer with her own name when someone does something really dumb on the grainy screen over Julio’s shoulder.  “Those idiots in the Rockstar truck are going to break their rear axle,” she scoffs, turning back to the TV.

“For sure.” He nods.

 

For all that he looks like he’s probably pretty enough to be a truly terrible lay, he’s... less irritating than expected.  They watch 15 more minutes of the race. He doesn’t mansplain how tires work or anything.  He asks her very seriously during a commercial break if she likes dogs. When she tells him she’s just gotten back from spending a month on the North Shore, he doesn’t get all weird about it, doesn’t try to talk to her about surfing shit like he knows more than her or start telling tall tales, and honestly that’s become one of her biggest red flags of nope. He just grins and shrugs and says, “I’m from Canada, we don’t really have waves for surfing.”

“Never been to Tofino then, I guess.” She laughs and when his face doesn’t show any recognition of the name, adds, “...British Columbia.”

“Oh,” he says, scrunching his nose, “The W. Ouache.”  Suddenly he sounds... a lot more French than he had a minute ago.

She drains her beer. “I live like two blocks away.”

“Yeah?”

“You wanna?”

“Fuck yes,” he sighs, and drains his beer too. He pauses. Looks at her, and asks, almost shy and looking young enough that she’s suddenly certain Julio should have carded him, “Do you watch hockey at all?”

“Hockey?” Hockey is such a rich white person sport. Especially here, where there’s no ice that isn’t made on purpose. “Why would I care about water once it’s flat and frozen?”  Maybe snowboarding, that’s all right, but it’s still not surfing. It’s not _the ocean_.  

The look of relief that washes over his face is obvious enough to tell her all she needs to know about that, though.  

         

Some kind of famous hockey player or not, this is probably a terrible idea. He’s probably going to bitch about the fact that it’s early December and she hasn’t shaved her legs, much less _waxed_ anywhere since August, because, you know... wet suits.  He’s probably going to bitch about a condom, then text her five days from now with a “wyd.”  Canadian fuck boys are still fuck boys. God. But you don’t actually get a nickname like Crash making sensible rational decisions all the time. And he’s got a smile that’s really _really_ making it difficult to remember all that.  So, why the fuck not.

Maybe he’ll surprise her.

 

 

 

He’s not a bad lay _at all_ and it’s so unfair, because she has enough assholes in her life already. He spends a good 30 minutes eating her out until his jaw must be aching and she’s come twice and is close to a third, then rolls the condom over his dick and slides into her, kissing her mouth, her neck, her jaw, her breasts. He tastes like her and is such a good kisser, and fuck, she’d really thought she’d gotten over the whole dumb, rich, spoiled athlete phase of her life.

Later, he falls asleep wrapped around her like he’s starved for skin contact, and then doesn’t freak out about any of the others from the house sitting around when he wakes up, doesn’t have any weird no homo moments about Stick feeding him an orange slice.

 

 

“I was serious about the no girlfriend thing,” she adds later, when he’s pulled on clothes and is adding her number to his phone.

“Dude,” he says, “I know, it’s cool. We can keep it just bros.” He bites his lip while he thumbs through his phone. “Anyway, I’ve got... like, I’ve already got someone, you know? Like that. Serious. I’m not looking... I’m just looking for a friend, you know?”

“Does she know you’re here?” Crash asks, because she really, really, really hates getting dragged into being the other woman without knowing it. That shit is rude as hell.

“He,” Chants says softly, “He’s... a he. And yeah. He knows. He’s... We’re on opposite sides of the country right now but we’re...” He smiles, soft and sappy looking. “He’s just really fucking awesome, you know?”

 

Holy shit. This kid is... this kid is some kind of famous athlete and he just... “Thank you for trusting me to tell me that.”

He looks startled for a second and then says, “Dude. Duh. Of course I trust you.”

Which is _so dumb_ because they just met, they don’t know anything about each other. This boy is naïve as hell. But at the same time, she totally gets it. It doesn’t feel like they just met at all.  It feels like he _should_ trust her. Like she trusts him.

 

 

“He was 73% less terrible than expected,” Stick observes, handing her a cup of tea as the door swings shut behind him.  But she’d already known Stick liked him because he doesn’t offer his kombucha to just anyone.

“Right? At least 73.”  She takes a sip of her tea and ducks under Stick’s shoulder. The feel, the scent, the presence of her best friend as warm and comforting as always. “Like, almost kind of sweet.”

 

 

 

 

 2.

 

Some days, the surf is heavy and choppy in a way that is not great for anything except getting beat up by the waves, and your board, and the rocks, and your own self-doubt.  You lose your board, your _brand new_ board, five waves in, and then cut your foot on a fucking shell on the walk back to the truck, only to pass by two or three guys who are just making their way out to beach at 10:30, hungover and laughing and lazy, but who probably have real sponsorships, despite the fact that you’ve been out there since 5:00 in the morning, to get as much time in as possible. To not have to fight for a space in the lineup on the best waves, and not have to share the ocean with assholes. Assholes who all probably have _invitations_ to Titans. Invitations everyone keeps making up reasons why she won’t get.  And then when you get in the truck you’ve missed a call from your mother who’s left a voicemail wondering when you’re going to “grow up,” stop wasting your life with all these beach bums and go back to college. And another one from Disko yelling at you for going by yourself, in the dark:  a minute and twenty seconds of, “You’re not Jeff fucking Clark, kid, you need to fucking check yourself!” and “Call me so I know you’re not dead!”   

 

Well, fuck Jeff Fucking Clark anyway.

 

But some days the wind’s offshore, and the swell is perfect and it’s all glassy barrels and the heady, soaring feeling of _flying_ .  The perfect balanced feeling of dancing _with_ the waves, not fighting against them, of _flow._

Crash rides that rush of victory all the way back to the house, rinses off herself and her wetsuit in the shower, and finds Chants has arrived while she was washing.  He’s chilling in the kitchen, sitting on the counter with Stick and Carly, trading small talk and eating an avocado with a spoon.

“Bruh.” He grins at her. “Stick said you had some awesome sets today! Congrats! When are you guys gonna take me out with you?”

“We’ll stick to teaching you how to surf to begin with,” Stick says, wrapping his arm around Chants’ shoulders, “before Crash takes you someplace like Mavericks. The waves are too big there for newbies. Let us teach you on some foamies in Santa Cruz first.”

Stick does not surf out of Pillar’s Point with her, doesn’t even surf Ocean Beach if the surf’s too rough. Because, as he says, he has too much work left on this goddamn dissertation to have time to die, and he refuses to let his advisor get all his research if he kicks it. He does, however, like to go and sit up on the rocks and _watch_ while they surf, and geek out about fluid dynamics.

Chants honest to god pouts. Lip sticking out just a little bit. “I don’t care if they’re big, I can figure it out.”  She has to smile, because he obviously has no idea _how big_ , or what he’s talking about _at all._

“Let us teach how you to pop up on your board before we get ahead of ourselves,” she promises.  And then, because it’s been a fucking great day, and she feels loose, and relaxed, and on top of the fucking world, and like she deserves a reward, “Come on, I want to smoke up and then spend forever sucking your dick.”

 

 

Chants has a _nice_ dick. Big, but not so big that it’s just fucking useless and can’t fit anywhere. Thick. Uncut. Prettily shaped. Exactly the kind of dick she likes to zone out with, and just... enjoy the sensation the feel of warm skin, the heaviness on her tongue, and the smell and warmth and closeness of the person’s legs around her.  And she’s not trying to brag or anything, but she’s pretty freaking good at the whole oral thing.  And Chants has been incredibly generous in the giving head department – content to lie between her legs and lick her out for ages, whenever she wants, like _goddamn_ that boy likes eating pussy, so she’s pretty happy to reciprocate.

She’s got him all the way in her throat, working the base of his dick with her tongue.  She swallows and he straight up _gasps,_ legs twitching where she’s lying between them. She tries to stay on it, even has he tries to pull her off.   

“Dude,” she says, “just sit back and enjoy the ride, I got it.”

He blinks at her, dazed. “Just trying to let you breathe, bro.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m a big wave surfer.”

He’s got his fist wrapped around his dick, tip of it inches from her mouth.  “Sure?” he asks, still a little dazed-sounding, “that’s awesome? But uh...”

“No. I’m. I’m training to... You can get trapped, under the water, for a long time. You can _die_. I can hold my breath for four minutes.”  That’s four minutes when her heart beat’s calm and steady, not a little elevated from sex, or thundering with fear and adrenaline during a wipeout, but still. “I practice every day. When I need air, I’ll tap your thigh.”

It’s not a thing she tells dudes often, because. You know. Honestly most of them don’t deserve to know.  Except Disko, of course, who practices the same thing, for the same reasons, who takes her to the pool a couple times a week and wrestles with her under the water, holds her down until she panics, makes her fight to get to the surface, so that she _knows_ , so that when it happens in real life, she’ll know how to fight, how to hold her breath, how to survive, who _worries about_ her like an annoying older brother.  More than her actual older brother, who knows she surfs but doesn’t know _what_ she’s been surfing, doesn’t know she’s been swimming out a half mile into shark-protected sanctuary waters to drop into 20-30 foot slabs every time the surf’s up.

But the obvious response, when someone tells you they can go without air for four minutes, in a cock-sucking setting, is to get your dick back down their esophagus and try to get your nut, or whatever. At least it always has been, when she’s shared that information before.

To her surprise, Chants straight up drops his hand from around his dick, sits up on one elbow, and says, startled, “ _Woah. No shit?”_

“Uh. Yes?”

“Dude.” He offers the same, slightly slick fist up for a fist bump.  Solemnly, she lifts her hand from his leg, and bumps him back.

“Like,” he continues, “how long can normal people hold their breath?”

Seriously? “I don’t know, around two minutes, if they’re fairly healthy with good lungs?”

“Is four minutes... the most?” he continues on, “I bet I can hold my breath for that long at least –“ And he trails off, suddenly fiddling with his watch.  “This thing totally is supposed to have a stop watch. You wanna see who can hold their breath their longest?”

“Uh,” she says suddenly confused. Weren’t they having sex?  “I just told you. It’s me. I can hold my breath for four minutes. I can hold my breath longer than you.”

Chants looks at her. Eyes narrowed. “I don’t know, dude. I have _excellent_ lung capacity. I mean, I know I haven’t been _training_ for that specifically, but I think I’ve got lung space.  I mean no offense. I know it’s like your thing or whatever. But I’m just saying...”

“Asshole,” she laughs, “you cannot. We’ll time it, but not with your awful fucking watch. We need an unbiased third party.”

“Agreed.” His dick is still just hanging out.  Board shorts on the floor in a pile.  Just lying there half prone in nothing but a snapback and his douchebag watch, dick lying heavy and half-chubbed against his thigh.

 

 

In the end, it takes forever to decide just on who’s going to be the timekeeper and judge. No one can figure out how the stopwatch on his fancy watch works.  Chants argues that Disko is not an unbiased third party.  “Dude, you’re his rookie, I know where his loyalties lie.”

“Stick will do it.” Crash finally states. “He’s a physicist. He’s always unbiased. He’s a man of science.”

“Acceptable,” Luc concedes.

Crash wins. Obviously. But she’s impressed, Chants _does_ have pretty stellar lung capacity, for someone who’s just been doing a lot of cardio not actively practising holding his breath. He gets up to 3:15, red in the face and straining, before he finally gives in and takes a big gasping breath.  He solemnly shakes her hand afterwards, and tells her, “Good game, bruh, good game,” slapping her on the shoulder.  Sometimes he’s so ridiculous she can’t handle it.

 

“Were we... going to finish having sex?” she asks, in the suddenly crowded bedroom. Luc still hasn’t put on pants.

“Sure?” Luc asks, “but, uh... the whole big wave surfing thing. Is that like a... big deal? The whole... Can you... like rocks and shit, man. That sounds hardcore.”

“Yes,” Crash says.

“Oh.” Is he _blushing_?  “Can you... I mean, I can’t do anything with rocks and drowning and possible death. The front office would fucking kill me and then sue my corpse. But, could I... were you guys serious about teaching me how to surf?”

“Brah,” she says, “of course. _Of course_. Come on, we’ll go down now and help you find the right kind of board for you.”

 

 

 

 

3.

 

It’s early October. The Pe’ahi Women’s Challenge is coming up in a few weeks, but for now she’s here. Back in California. And Chants is back too, from all the places he goes in the summer. Moving into his own apartment, and buying Sleets’ cousin’s old Defender, despite the fact that it sticks in 3rd gear, and the ignition only works if the door is shut and the heat is turned to three.

Her alarm always goes off early, but there’s no point in going out this morning. She checked all her apps, looked at the NOAA website last night before bed, like she does every night, and there won’t be any good waves – at Mavericks or down in Santa Cruz, or Ocean Beach.  Chants slept over, and when she starts climbing out of bed and poking around through drawers for gym clothes, he lifts his head off the pillow from where he’s cuddled up against Stick.  

“Catch good waves,” he says drowsily.

“Not going out,” she answers, “it’s all flats today, going to the gym instead.”

That gets him sitting up.  “Seriously? Bro. We should work out together!”

“Can you keep up with me?” she teases, pulling on a sports bra.

“Dude. If I can’t keep up, you can tell my trainers.

 

 

“I’ve been meaning to ask you for like a year how much you deadlift,” Chants says as they walk inside the weight room. He’d insisted on going to “his gym” and by his gym had meant the Sharks practice facility – but the season hasn’t started yet, and it’s mostly empty, and Crash has to admit it’s definitely a nicer facility than the 24 HR Fitness she pays $9.99 a month for down the street from the house.

“190,” she says, “but I’m starting off in the squat rack today.”

Chants nods in agreement, “The legs do feed the wolf.”

 

 

“What’s the most important muscle group to train in surfing?” Chants asks during a break. He’s manifested Gatorade out of thin air again – two frosty bottles of light blue flavor. It’s an ability that must come with the sponsorship or something.  Crash wouldn’t know – she’s fighting a constant battle to keep herself from telling Roxy to go shove it – and it’s hard to figure out why she’s even fighting that urge because their idea of sponsorship barely covers the economy class tickets to and from events and maybe a new board every once in awhile. In exchange for lots of annoying pictures of her in their swimsuits with sand on her ass.  She doesn’t know how Loops puts up with it.

“Legs,” Crash answers, “but core’s really really important too. You have to hold that balance with your core and when you’re talking about really big waves, you’re talking about a lot of core strength.”

“Cool.” Chants nods. “So, hanging legs raises after this?”

Somehow a few sets of hanging leg raises morphs into inverted sit ups.

“Dude,” Chants says, from where he’s hanging upside down next to her, but facing the opposite direction, “so, wait, what’s going on with you and Roxy?”

“They’re fucking sexist is what’s going on with them,” Crash exhales through her sit up. She claps her hand against Chants’ when they meet at the top, before lowering herself back down. It probably looks badass as hell. She wishes there was someone there recording it.

“So, can you change sponsors?”

“They’re _all_ sexist as hell. It doesn’t matter who I had, they’d still be paying me shit.” Another two reps, another two hand claps. It’s _hard,_ almost impossible to talk, but Chants doesn’t mind that it’s mostly panting. Her abs are already burning from the leg raises. “Roxy’s pissed.” Clap. “Because I keep making a fuss.” Breath. “I keep trying to get into.” Clap. “Men’s only competitions.” Breath. “They keep telling me.” Clap. “To be more of a team player.” Breath. “That there are plenty of.” Clap. “Good women’s competitions.” Breath. Finally she lets herself hang. “It’s fucking bullshit.”

“Dude.” Chants grunts, swings up until he’s hanging from his hands, then drops down onto the thick mats below them. “Dude. What. That sounds like bullshit.”  Crash does the same.

“It _is_ fucking bullshit,” Crash pants, bent over with her hands on her quads. “It’s the biggest fucking bullshit on the planet. Like, I’m grateful all those ladies came before and that there’s a women’s heat now in a lot of the competitions, or just separate competitions at all and whatever, but it’s _bullshit_ . I’m so fucking tired of all these assholes saying, ‘Well, they’re good enough to do a separate heat on their own, but they’re not good enough to be in the main competition, there’s 20-30 guys that’re better and deserve a spot in the lineup more.’ It’s fucking... I don’t want to be in a women’s competition. I want to _win_ the main event and I want to rub their fucking faces in it. I’m better than them, and I’m stronger than them, and I carve prettier waves than them, and I want them to fucking know it. I want every single one of them to know I beat _them_.” Talking about it makes her hands shake with anger.

The muscles in her torso are trembling, and her heart is hammering and Chants is staring at her, flushed and tousle-haired, big wide eyes, and mouth open.  “Bro” he says, and he sounds choked up, like he’s going to cry, “Bro.” And he just grabs her, pulls her into his chest. “Bruh, I want you to do that so much. I just, fuck, I love you, man. It’s like... God, fuck those fucking assholes, you’re the best. You’ve got... Like, fuck, Crash, you’d make such a good hockey player.”  

And that, she realizes, is probably the highest praise he knows how to give her.

Chant’s entire torso is slick with sweat. He _stinks,_ and she’s sure she does, too, and it’s too fucking hot to be hugging for this long, but she stays wrapped up in his arms, face buried in the sweat of his neck.

When they finally break apart he looks a little sheepish. He wipes the back of his hand across his eyes and she says, “Okay well, we need to do at least two more sets of those before we’re done.” Gesturing back up at the bar, to spare him acknowledging the emotion of the moment.

“Yeah.” He laughs, shaky. “Yeah, dude, I wish someone was here to take a video, we probably look badass as fuck.”

 

 

They spend a long time stretching out, and then Luc shows her to a woman’s shower room, which she’s frankly kind of surprised exists, but it is small and he explains it’s what the women PTs use, and then goes off to use to find his own locker room and showers down the hall. When he meets her back on the mats he’s got two smoothies, and hands her one, then sits down next to her against the wall.  

“You know. I’ve been thinking about that shit about women’s competitions not being as good as men, and it’s... people always say the same shit about women’s hockey too, and... You know what one of the big differences is... between women’s skill level and men?”

“What’s that?” Crash asks warily, because this could be a conversation that gets really annoying really quickly.

“Women have like the same amount of natural skill, right? But it’s just... It’s fucking money, right? Because in women’s hockey you have these crazy skilled chicks, but they get paid shit. So they have to work all day, like a normal person job, whereas guys like me, we get paid big money and all I have to do all day is try to get better at playing hockey right? Dude, I’ve got ten people whose sole job is to make sure I’m at the top of physical fitness of my life at all times, monitoring me and training me and reviewing tape with me, and chicks don’t get that. They get a coach who half the time is juggling coaching a college team and like... being a fucking realtor or something, and they get volunteer trainers and they just...”

“Yeah,” Crash says, because it’s true, even though it’s frustrating as hell.

“Look,” he says, “I uh, when I got my smoothies, I ran into Tom. One of the PTs who’s here. And I... Anyway, he owes me a favor, right? So. I just.”

“Chants...”

“Crash. You want to be the best. I... I can’t imagine wanting that, and someone _not_ giving me the tools to get there. I’ve had those tools my whole life. It’s why I am where I am. And I... it burns me up. To know that you’re there, putting in the sweat and the time, but without any resources.  I just... I want to see you do it.  When you smoke every single dude in the lineup, I’m gonna be so fucking proud of you, I’m going to have so many stick taps, okay, so just... I talked to Tom, and he’s gonna be here in like five seconds. And you’re going to have to talk to him some and watch some tape together, because you use your body in a different way than I use my body, but he can get you there. You’re gonna fuckin’ dominate. And I just...” He squeezes her hand. “You deserve all the support I deserve, right? So you’re gonna get it.”

She’s too surprised, too overcome to argue, just squeezes Chant’s hand.  

 

 

 

“He wants to meet three times a week, and he got me to send him videos of all my last competitions.”

“Yah, dude.” Chants says, not taking his eyes off the road as they’re driving back to the surf house.

“Chants. That’s not. No favor is... That amount of work is... I mean who’s going to pay for...”

“Brah.” Chants rolls his eyes at her, “You know what my salary is, don’t make it a big thing, okay? Let me just... Let me help, okay?”

She’s pulling at the plastic label of the Gatorade bottle. “I’m only saying yes because the NHL is kind of fucking evil, and redistributing their assets to underfunded female competitors is an act of resistance.”

Chants takes a hand of the steering wheel – offers her a silent fist.  She bumps hers against his.

“Damn the Man,” Chants adds.  Then he grins, “Save the Empire,” and _winks_ at her.

“You’re such a _dork,_ ” she laughs. “I can’t believe you liked that movie. You’re not cool enough to like that movie.”

 

 

 

 

4.

 

She wins the Roxy Pro in France - and it’s sweet, to win it. Especially winning it wearing Billabong’s logo, when there’s still bad blood between her and Roxy.  But still. Every time someone qualifies her success, _#1 in the women’s competition. Top female surfer_ , she wants to punch someone in the face. And it’s not like Billabong is all that much more patient about listening to her argue to be allowed into the men’s events. Or like the WSL isn’t just completely fucking done with having that conversation with her, honestly. Still, at least Billabong’s really helping with training and travel and equipment, now that she’s putting up real numbers - placing in the top 5 in every competition she’s surfed in this year. And they let her keep Tom.

Still, it’s frustrating because she’s not a trick surfer - she’s a big wave surfer, and a lot of these women’s competitions don’t _have_ big waves.  Bell’s Beach was good. And Fiji Women’s Pro at Cloudbreak. But she’d hung around to watch the men’s competition that started two days later, and when she’d compared her rides with the rides of the top scorers there, she… Well she would’ve won, if they’d let her.

And she gets it, she does, if they let her surf in the men’s competition, then what’s the point of having the women’s competition and then all of a sudden there’s 20 less spots in a lineup for women to compete in, and she _gets_ why a lot of the women she surfs against her want her to shut the hell up.  It’s just that - she doesn’t want to be surfing in the women’s championship tour. She wants to be surfing in the Big Wave tour, and there _isn’t_ a women’s one of those.

 

But for now, she’s back in California, for a few weeks, at least, until Maui. And she’s missed the people she hasn’t gotten to see as much of, being away competing.

 

She sends Chants an invitation text to their Halloween party – big all caps letters that say COSTUME MANDATORY, but of course the asshole shows up straight from one of his games in a $10,000 suit. He also walks past her about three times before he recognizes her.  “Dude.” He says. “You’re all…”  It’s kinda hilarious, how his eyes keep flickering over the pink dress, the heels, the cleavage.

“I’m Elle Woods,” she explains, pushing a strand of the blond wig behind her ear, “Attorney at law.”

“Oh, right, for sure.” He nods and reaches out to pat the fake tiny dog in her giant purse.

“Brah,” she says, letting disappoint seep into her voice, and gesturing at his suit. “Brah. So unchill.”

“Whatever, dude, I’m totally in costume.”

“Really? Who are you? You have three seconds to answer and you can’t say a sports announcer, a scouting agent, or your lawyer.”

Chants blinks. Opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again and says “The Patriarchy. Duh.”

God, sometimes she just really really loves him.

“So look,” he’s continuing, fishing a brown paper bag out of a satchel, “starry nights. Neezy taught me. Two parts Jagermeister and one part Goldschläger. You want some?”

 

 

Chants makes them all starry nights. He hangs up his suit jacket and rolls up shirt sleeves and still looks like a fucking douchebag and even more like The Patriarchy, and insists on setting up a beer pong table outside. He teaches Carly the rules and keeps her on his team for at least five rounds.

“I can’t believe I just saws Carly do a chest bump, and scream ‘suck it!’ to the losing team” Crash says from the kitchen counter where’s she’s lining up rum shots.

Disko wipes a fake tear from his eyes. “They grow up so fast.”

When Chants come in with Carly on his shoulders he’s shouting “VICTORY SHOTS FOR THE VICTORIOUS!”

“You’ve corrupted her.” Crash laughs. “She used to be a sweet science nerd.”

“Everybody has an inner bro,” Chants grins, “it’s just about unlocking it.”

“Why don’t I have a snapback?” Carly asks from above.

“I don’t know, dude, but that is a situation that can be fixed.”

 

 

Much later in the evening when all the other guests have gone home or gone to sleep, Chants throws himself down on the couch next to her.

“Watch the bong!” Sleets hisses as Chants almost kicks it over.

“Crash,” Chants says directly into her hip bone, “where are your pink heels.”

“Do you have any idea how much those things hurt? I lost them like an hour in.”

“Oh.”

“You liked them, didn’t you.”

“I’m sorrrryyyy,” Chants says, and he is obviously, very, very drunk. “Is it bad that you look hot?” He rolls over so he’s looking up at her from her lap. “Am I a bad feminist?”

She’s about to joke but he looks earnest, and _worried_ . “You can like whatever you want to like, Chants, you’re not a bad feminist for thinking heels are hot. You’re only not being a feminist if you think all women should wear heels, whether _they_ like them or not, just because you think they’re hot.”

“Oh.” He grins. “Okay. I’m okay then!”

“That’s kind of what... I mean, that’s kind of the point of Elle Woods. Well, it’s more the point that women can be any way they want, as long as it’s their choice.”

“Who’s Ellen Woods?”

“OH MY GOD,” Sleets says from across the room. “OH MY GOD, HAS HE NEVER SEEN _LEGALLY BLONDE?_ ” And everyone immediately agrees that _Animal Homes_ is no longer nearly as important as queuing up _Legally Blonde_ and all its subsequent sequels.

 

 

“I feel like Elle Woods probably sucks dick better than me,” Disko says through a cloud of smoke. “That’s so disappointing.”

From her lap, where she’s got her hands carding through his hair, Chants says reflexively, “She doesn’t suck dick better than _me_.”

“Whatever, Chantal,” Disko laughs, “you’ve sucked one dick in your whole life, and there’s no way Jackson isn’t easy as fuck for you.”

“Hey, one dick _lots of times!_ ”

“Still, dude. I’m just saying.”

“Before we take this any further,” Stick says, from where he’s sitting with Chant’s ankles in his lap, “I don’t think Chants is allowed to have another _competition_ like the one last year. Amanda scares me.”

“Dude,” Chants says, “that competition was like... okay. Okay. So, it was fine because it was technically a race not an experiment, and that’s alright, and time is a _quantity,_ but it’s so hard to accurately measure something like _best,_ you know? Like how would we ever even decide who sucks dick best, the variables are too much.” He rubs his face against the cloth of Crash’s skirt. “It’s the worst. I hate it. Messy stats are so frustrating.”

Stick bends over to the table, picks up a drink and pushes it towards Chants. “Please drink more of your disgusting Goldschläger drink and tell me more about your feelings about messy stats, this is so relevant to my interest.”  Sometimes Crash forgets that Chants’ parents are big, well-known scientists. It shouldn’t be surprising, but it still is.

“Well, it’s like, how would you even --” He does finish off the last of his starry night then, and then continues, “So you can’t test it on the same dude, because whoever goes first obviously gets the advantage right? And if you’ve got two different dudes, then you’re just introducing even more variables, right, because different people have different tastes, preferences, sensitivity levels, it’s not an accurate measure against each other. How would you even organize the rubric, you know?”

“You could suck the same dude’s dick, but on different days,” Disko suggests.

“But what if he’s having a bad day on one of them, or has heartburn or three cups of coffee instead of one -- there’s no way you can duplicate the exact same circumstances.”

“So you’re saying you can’t determine the best?” Sleets asks.

“No, you can, it’s just that humans make science messy, or really… any sort of life science gets messy, right? So once you bring humans into it, it can't be about individual experiments, it has to be about statistical averages.” He flops around in Crash’s lap a little, before sitting up. “We'd have to suck at least fifty dicks apiece for there to be any sort of real data. And honestly, who has the time.”

That makes Disko crack into a fit of giggles. Stick is smiling, too; he squeezes Chants’ ankle and says, “And even then how would you avoid sampling bias in your selection pool?  

“Right?” Chants sighs. “It’s so frustrating.”

 

 

 

5. 

 

She’s limping out of Disko’s truck towards the house when they see the package.

They’d spent the afternoon out at Mavericks, everyone trying to catch the huge swells coming in off the shore just ahead of the storm, while they still had enough structure to be surfable at all.  Ever since the WSL let her get her feet wet in the Big Wave portion of the Fiji Pro last summer, she’s finally, _finally_ been breaking into the competitions she wants to be in. Puerto Escondido - where she came in _third_ . Overall. Behind Disko and Billy Kemper. Pico Alto. Pe’ahi Challenge. And… Nazaré was coming up next month. _Nazaré._

In her spare time she’s back here, for the winter waves off of Pillar’s Point - chasing Mavericks.

 

She’d wiped out _hard_ , second to last wave of the day, the toe of her board digging into the face and tossing her up, then rolling her through the falls. She’d spent a long _long_ 45 seconds plunged down to the bottom, pressure of over 30 feet of water pushing against her lungs, icy cold and dark and trapped, unable to get up before the second wave crashed down and trapped her again, rolled and swirled and disoriented, a sock in a giant washing machine full of rocks – the ocean dark green-black and impenetrable. She couldn't tell which way was up, her heart was hammering and lungs starving, fighting against the urge to open her mouth and gasp for oxygen that wasn’t there. When she’d finally been able to make it up to the surface, she couldn’t see her board, or anyone else waiting in the lineup, the wave had moved her so far away. She had to swim back to the shore, arms trembling like jelly. She’d been lying in the sand, sobbing and shaking and struggling to breathe, puking up breakfast and saltwater, face a mess of snot and tears and seaweed when she saw her board, wobbling around in the shallows just on the shore, intact, a small, unlooked-for benediction. She’d swum back out, despite Disko’s protests, afraid that if she didn’t get back on a board right then, she’d never get back on one ever again.

It was worth it.  The last wave had been a beauty of a right, and she’d caught it perfectly, rode the whole length of the barrel, coasted through the soup and drifted to the shore. Sore, exhausted, but proud.

 

 

And the package is there, waiting for them when they get back, after a long drive home and Disko lecturing her about risks and then finally saying, pride thick in his voice, “Hey, a two wave hold down at Mavericks. I guess no one can say you haven’t earned your stripes now, huh.”

Unexpected and unassuming in brown paper.  Waist high, nearly as wide as she is tall.  With international air mail stamps from Quebec City.

“Something from Chants!” she shouts over her shoulder to Disko.

“Rad!” He comes up behind her and pokes it with his toe. “It’s shaped like a painting.”

“I think his girl paints or something.”

“Oh right, gnar.”

 

A storm is just rolling in so they don’t open it immediately. They have to get the boards under the porch, and put the top on the Jeep before it starts raining.  Then Disko insists on getting the duct tape off the gash on her leg that she hadn’t noticed until they’d come back to the truck on the beach. They'd taped it up there as best they could, but it needs more attention now. Disko flushes it with alcohol and sterile saline solution, wraps it again, properly, in an actual bandage, not a dirty bandana and duct tape.  Her wetsuit is ruined and she doesn’t have the money to buy a new one right now.  “You might need stitches,” he offers, because blood is seeping through the bandage again.

When they finally unwrap the paper from the package to find the wooden sides of a painting crate, the windows are open and the wind is rattling the blinds, and the smell of petrichor, and the storm and the salt of the ocean is thick in the house. Sleets fishes a crowbar out of garage and pries the nails out and...

Holy shit.

The wooden side falls away and Disko lets a quiet “oh fuck” and Sleets drops the crowbar, and Crash just... sits down on the floor in front of it.  Disko sits down heavily next to her.  Sleets on the other side. Nobody says anything, silent with surprise and awe.  The flickering light of the storm moves over the crashing waves of paint.  She doesn’t even realize she’s crying until a teardrop spills down her hand and lands on her thigh.

It’s. It’s the crushing pressure and dark of the bottom of a wave.  It’s all the terror she felt, pushed against the rocks.  It’s all the joy and breathless exhilaration of riding a wave all the way to it’s end.  It’s. Wild. Pure wildness, the vast unknowable, untouchable wilderness of the deep ocean.  A huge sob tears it’s way out of her chest and Sleets wraps an arm around her and just says, “Dude. Dude it’s so --” and _Sleets_ is crying too. Sleets, who has the emotional depth of an iguana.

 

“It’s Yemanja,” Crash says, soft and reverent. 

 

 

+1.

 

When Crash was a little girl, she used to surf Florianopolis back in Brazil when she spent summers with her grandparents.  One summer morning, there’d been an old woman on the beach in a white dress, waiting with her ankles in the tide. Crash saw her from where she was sitting on her board outside the break– one minute she was there and then the rise of the swell took the shore out of Crash’s line of sight, and when it was visible again she was gone.  There wasn’t really anywhere she could have gone where Crash wouldn’t still be able to see her walking away, yet she was gone – completely. When Crash paddled to the shore to make sure the woman wasn’t hurt, or lying on the beach unconscious or something, she still wasn’t there – no trace of her, no footprints in the soft sand leading to where Crash knew she’d been standing.  No car parked in the parking lot across the dunes. Nothing. But in the foaming waves lapping against the shore, there were scattered white and red roses.  Crash bent down and picked on up, held it in her hand, strong and fragrant, and looked up and down the beach but still didn’t see the woman.  She tucked the rose into her ponytail and paddled back out.  She’d caught a head-high wave with a perfect barrel, and the rush of exhilaration she’d felt flying between those green glass walls had left her shaking, heart pounding, face split into a grin so wide it ached, giggling and shocky with her own daring.

 

 

 

Years later, when she was about 13, she’d gone up to Rio de Janeiro with friends to watch the Oi Rio Pro. The beaches were crowded, but she got to see some amazing surfers – some amazing waves, and she’d gotten a rash-guard signed by Adriano de Souza.  That night she and her friend Tião made out by the beach, and then some more on the couch they were sharing at a friend of a friend’s.

The next morning they went to buy pastels from the vendor across the street before going down to the beach to watch more of the competition. But the old lady at the flower stand next to the pastel vendor pressed a white rose into her hand, kissed her cheek and said, “For Yemanja.”  

“What?” Crash asked, but the old lady just winked at her, and started selling a bouquet to a young woman behind them.

Tião tucked the flower into her ponytail and shrugged at her, and they took their breakfast and walked down to the beach.

They found a spot to watch the day’s heats, packed onto the crowded sand, but the kids next to them were a little older and she and Tião got sucked into talking to them and pretty soon they were arguing about where the _biggest_ waves were.  “No,” one of the kids said, an Australian with shaggy blond hair and a scar above his right eye, “Nazaré is the biggest, but not the best. If you want the toughest waves, you’ve got to go to Mavericks.”

“Where’s Mavericks?” Crash asked. “Why are they so tough?”

“They’re _big_ , technical, the water’s cold and full of Noahs, the undertow’s a beast. It’s everything that makes big waves hard, all at once. There’s lots of pro surfers who won’t even surf it. It’s not even in the WSL tour. If you want to surf it in a competition you have to get an _invitation_ to Titans of Mavericks.”

“I’m going to surf it,” Crash said, suddenly sure, suddenly so _impatient_ to be able to get to go out there, to try it, to feel that rush.

The Aussie looked at her skeptically. “It’s not for _girls,_ ” he said.

“Why isn’t it for girls?” Tião asked, hand gripping around her waist.

“Uh... It’s big and technical and cold and full of Noahs with a terrible undertow and people die?” the kid repeated, like they hadn’t just heard him. “The only spot nearly dangerous is Pipeline and that's mostly just because of the reef.” He looks down at Crash and says, “I’m sure you’re a decent surfer and everything, and girls are okay at surfing stuff like this, but girls can’t surf big waves like Mavericks or Nazaré, the waves are just too big, their bodies aren’t strong enough and girls hesitate too much, they’re too cautious in the drop and it wrecks them.”

“You don’t know what I can surf,” Crash spat back, chin lifted, suddenly ready to fight. What the hell did he think he knew about how she could surf? She was racking up youth surfing trophies. Her parents had let her move back to Brazil to stay with her grandparents and her aunt in Sao Paulo so she could compete more, since there weren’t any good waves in _Galveston._

“Hey,” the kid laughs, “ _feisty._ It’s cute. I’m sure you’ve got moxie or whatever. And I’m sure you’re a good surfer for a girl. I’m just trying to tell you it’s not safe.”

“Bia,” Tião says, softly, “let it go.”

She has to take three big breaths but finally she’s calmed down enough to look at the kid, tilt her chin up and say, “I hope that you get a sponsor and I hope that you go pro, because I want you to be in the lineup when I _beat you_ , and when I win Mavericks, I want you to be there to watch me,” and then brushed past him, letting her shoulder knock against his as she pushed past into the crowd.

 

 

Crash doesn’t take roses out of the water every time she surfs, but she certainly does every time she surfs Mavericks, or Pipeline. Anything big, or dangerous.  Any time she’s had a competition, she’s taken roses out early in the morning.  She’s never surfed on a board, since then, that wasn’t blue and white.  She’s never taken off her necklace of blue and white beads she bought that same week in Rio.

 

She didn’t come to California for college, despite what she told her parents, or the scholarship UC Santa Cruz offered her. She’d spent a season in Escondido, spent every Christmas she’d known him with Disko in Oahu. She is in California for one reason – Mavericks beach. 

The first time she’d taken Chants out to the wave in Santa Cruz, she’d stopped at the grocery store and bought white flowers to put in the surf and he hadn’t laughed at all. In fact, by the solemn way he’d touched his hand to her shoulder while she did it, by the way he kissed that poster of Mario Lemieux every night, she knew he understood. Somehow, surprisingly, Chants always understood.

 

 

 

She gets the call at 8pm her time, which means it’s midnight in Quebec City.  Her phone rings and she can’t answer because she’s hanging off a cliff face, about 50 ft up.  It’d been flat for a week – the only time any waves at all had generated, out on Ocean Beach, the wind had been onshore, and it’d been a choppy unsurfable mush.  They’d all been going stir-crazy.  So. Climbing.

“You have your cell phone ringer on?” Pax and Sleets both ask, incredulous.

“It’s on silent except priority calls,” she sighs.  Sleets is above seven feet above her, she can only see the seat of his pants, his dusty climbing shoes and lines.  “It’s _Chants_ ,” she adds, because he has his own ring tone.

When the text follows after, she makes sure all her lines are secure, that’s she’s clipped in everywhere, and lets go – swinging freely from the cliff face, hanging by her ropes, and fishes her phone out of the elastic belt around her waist holding her phone, her keys, her ID.  She follows the link, scans the article quickly.

“Shit.”

“What’s up?” Stick asks from below her.

“You know that old hockey dude Chants loves?”

“Yeah?”

“He’s a rapist-enabling dickbag.”

“Oh shittttttt,” Stick groans.

“He’s freaking out. I gotta talk to him.” _Talking to him_ means swinging back to the wall and trying to get up it as quickly as possible – there’s not much left to climb anyway. At the top it’s windy, but at least there’s decent reception.

It’s weird, maybe, because most of the time she’s actually pretty terrible at comforting people. But Chants is always different, and they’ve never had any trouble understanding each other.  Crash always imagined the Hockey Gods as winter lean and vicious, swirling snow-wisps who wanted blood on the sand/ice of their arena. But one thing she was sure of, Chants was better off talking to them himself than through some old rich white dude with too much gel in his hair.  Chants with his strong legs and kind eyes and smile that was always clear and open and true.  

“So fuck him, burn it down,” she says to him. “Fuck their united old boys club, burn it down and stand before your gods barefaced and proud.”

 

By the time he sends her the video of the burning jersey, they’re all in Disko’s truck, driving back to the house and she’s never been more proud, but she’s not surprised at all.

Stick’s playing around on his phone, says, “There’s a storm in the Pacific, about 600 miles away right now. The swells the buoys are reporting are…. Massive. Keep your phone on, Crash.”

 

 

The next morning, her phone rings while she’s doing deadlifts.  She stops mid-set to answer it.

“Hi, Crash. This is Jeff Clark. Titans of Mavericks starts in 32 hours. You’re in Heat 1.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Surfing terms - 
> 
> a right vs a left: a right wave is a wave that is breaking right, relative to the surfer (not relative to the viewer or the coastline). A left is a wave that is breaking left. So, in a right breaking wave, a surfer turns right once they’ve gone down over the lip of the wave, to ride through the tunnel, if there is one. 
> 
> Noahs: sharks
> 
>  
> 
> A great documentary about women in big wave surfing is It Ain’t Pretty. You can find it on Youtube but you have to pay to view it :
> 
> Some other videos about surfing:  
> [ How heavy is a big wave](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9-CaewvynA)  
> [ Very pretty footage of surfing at Mavericks ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gS6LJgfR1AM)  
> [ Worst Wipeouts of 2016 ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53EeW3mnbUM)  
> [ More amazingly bad wipeouts in big waves ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2yRUKsgoGI)  
> [ World Surfing League’s XXL Waves of the Year ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0K1rKyPWdo)  
> [ Footage of Evan Geiselman being rescued at Pipeline ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlTVLqnzywk)  
> [ Evan Geiselman talking about his experience ](https://youtu.be/HmswxjsXYPg)  
> [ Discovering Mavericks: a documentary about Mavericks beach and the wave there ](https://youtu.be/Y-uqE0Y4FOo)  
> [ And finally: a surfer fights off a shark attack in the middle of a competition ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anhRxIQutZ8)
> 
>  
> 
> Come find me on tumblr at superstitionhockey


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